It's a Healthy Habit

Processing - From The Sea To Your Plate

THE SARDINE AND HERRING RESOURCE

The Canadian and U.S. sardine industry is based on the juvenile North Atlantic herring. The North Atlantic herring is a small saltwater fish that is also known by its scientific name Clupea harengus. These fish travel in huge schools and live in the cold waters of the open ocean ranging from Greenland to North Carolina. North Atlantic herring can reach a size of about 40 cm (17 inches) in length, weigh as much as 0.7 kg (1.5 lbs), and can live as long as 20 years. Herring feed principally on plankton and are found in shallow inshore waters to offshore waters as deep as 200 meters. Herring schools are always in motion and migrate between spawning grounds, feeding grounds, and deep-water wintering areas.

The herring resource used by BRUNSWICK is found off the northeast coast of North America, particularly from the Bay of Fundy between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Chedabucto Bay and the Outer Banks off the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada, and the Gulf of Maine and coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the United States. The herring resource in these areas is made up of a number of different stocks, which have varying spawning and migration patterns.

Because the resource is located in waters that are subject to federal jurisdiction in Canada, and combined federal and state jurisdiction in the United States, the herring fishery is supervised by a number of regulatory authorities. In Canada, the herring fishery is regulated by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). In the United States, the herring fishery is regulated by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (responsible for federal waters, generally defined as the area from three to 200 miles offshore), the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) (a federal agency responsible for preparing and submitting management plans for fisheries requiring conservation and management off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut), the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) (which coordinates the management of fishery resources within state waters, generally within three miles of the shore) and individual state governments.

For fishery management purposes, Canadian and U.S. fishery regulators have divided the coastal waters under their jurisdiction into several management areas, based on an assessment of resource specific factors including seasonal distribution and availability of fish, regional differences in the nature and degree of harvesting and processing activity, differences between inshore and offshore fishing grounds and habitat and the location of known spawning grounds.

The key measures used by fishery regulators to assess the health of the herring resource are spawning stock biomass, which is the total weight of the mature herring population capable of reproducing, and age composition, which provides a forward-looking assessment of the resource based on the relative maturity of fish represented in the overall stock. Both the DFO and the NEFMC publish stock assessments and fishery evaluation reports based on their respective analyses of the herring resource, which are used to establish fishery management plans for the areas under their jurisdiction. These fishery management plans typically include catch limits or quotas that are based on an estimated maximum sustainable yield for the fishery, which represents an estimate of the total amount of herring that can be harvested without adversely affecting biomass or spawning stock biomass over time, or overfishing. In order to maintain the reproductive capacity of the herring species, both the DFO and the NEFMC also attempt to ensure that no overfishing occurs in any particular age group of the biomass, especially those younger than three to four years, as this is the age at which herring first mature and spawn.

In conjunction with their assessments of the maximum sustainable yield, fishery regulators also establish a total allowable catch (TAC) for each of the defined fishery management areas. These TACs are set and reviewed annually based on changes in the use of the resource and other available information on the distribution or relative size of the herring spawning components.

BRUNSWICK is committed to ensuring that herring remains a healthy, sustainable and protected resource. We work with fishermen, government and other stakeholders to ensure that this precious resource will continue to be effectively managed.

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